


when the devil's in the bible belt

by floweryfran



Series: a motley crew [6]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Family, Avengers Tower, Dissociation, Domestic Avengers, Fluff and Angst, Harley Keener & Peter Parker Friendship, Harley Keener & Peter Parker are Siblings, Harley Keener and Peter Parker - Freeform, Humor, Iron Family, Iron-Dad, Iron-Dad and Spider-Son, IronDad and SpiderSon, Irondad, Marvel Universe, POV Peter Parker, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Iron Man 3, Post-Spider-Man: Homecoming, Protective Peter Parker, Spider-son, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, alludes to domestic abuse, some banter, spiderson, tony is such a dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 05:19:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19739098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floweryfran/pseuds/floweryfran
Summary: Or, when Harley takes Peter to visit Tennessee.--Tony flicked Harley on the ear before he could go. “If you bring Peter back with an ugly Tennessean accent I will disown you. That is a promise, not a threat.”A smile cracked on Harley’s face. In his thickest drawl, he answered, “don’ you worry abou’ a thang, Anthony. He’ll be safer than a tube sock on prom night.”Tony blinked. “Not even gonna pretend to know what that means.”Harley and Peter mounted the stairs in tandem, shoulders pressed tight so that they could fit through the doorway side by side.Just before stepping across the gap, Peter turned to Harley, a deadpan look on his face. “Did I ever tell you my parents died in a plane crash?” Peter said.Harley’s jaw dropped but before he could cut in a word Peter clapped his hands together once and said, “Onward, Rose fuckin’ Hill!” marching into the plane without qualm.





	when the devil's in the bible belt

**Author's Note:**

> title from "bible belt" by dry the river, which is the song harley plays and is coincidentally one of the best songs ever so you should definitely listen to it
> 
> hello this is your official trigger warning: this chapter gets heavy with some allusions to harley's rough childhood so if domestic violence, dissociation, or cursing can be triggers for you then maybe skip this bad boy !
> 
> reminder that this is part of a series and will make infinitely more sense if you read the other chapters first but if youre not into that then all power to you homies

January finished in a blur of dirty grey— sooty snow, the second semester commencement solidified with graphite pencil smears onto the sides of hands like war paint, sickly sallow skin from wide-eyed nights watching the silvery moon ease across the sky instead of succumbing to sleep. It was an in-between month, the type of month that seemed to stretch on for the length of six lifetimes but left no indelible memories in its wake. A ghost month. 

It was a relief when Peter ceremoniously flipped the page of his _absolutely not lame to have an Avengers themed calendar stop teasing me May it’s really cool it’s cool May_ calendar to reveal the scrawl of February, topped with a photo of Thor wearing traditional Asgardian garb, a sparkling grin on his wide face, sitting in a pile of Valentines all addressed to him. 

That had been a good day, when the entire gang had swung around the tower for a photo shoot to put together the imminent promotional calendar. Peter distinctly recalled the moment when a large number of dogs- from the June picture, _Dog Days of Summer_ \- had escaped their leashes (not at all aided by Sam and Harley, of course, because why on Earth would they do that) and had all ran right at Bucky- attracted by his metal arm or his general fuck-all disposition or something- and had swamped him, knocking his feet out from under him and sending him sprawling with an earth-shaking _thump_. The two silent seconds as everyone froze to gauge his reaction to the frantic licks and nuzzles of the dogs were thick and swampy with tension, but the soft giggle that Bucky gave once regaining his bearings (which he would deny to his last breath) was warmer and gentler than fleece blankets by the amber glow of a fireplace. 

The problem was, however, that this particular prank had crafted some sort of strange camaraderie between Sam and Harley. 

Sam and Harley got on like a house on fire— which is to say they fueled each other’s flames and should not in any context be permitted in the same area for an extended period of time lest _literal death_ ensues.

They were both just mischievous enough and just law-respecting enough that, once they were put together, they became one single-minded menace with the sole purpose of sacrificing the mental stability of all the inhabitants of Tony Stark’s sanctuary-tower-apartment-complex-evil-lab-home-for-wayward-souls without ever managing to get in real trouble for it.

God, he never thought he would say it, but having the unlimited funds of Tony Stark at their disposal was a real nuisance sometimes.

Usually because it was an enabler for people with high brain-capacity and sonuvabitch nerve to purchase frankly excessive amounts of silly string, orange juice with pulp, and SFX fake blood.

The number of times Peter had stumbled through the tower by the saturated light of the sunrise, half-awake, with his own webs tying banana peels or copies of erotic vampire romance novels to his limbs, was too many to count. 

And Bucky, too, had been subjected to the royal treatment, when Sam lined his toilet rim with superglue ( _for super ass_ , he had explained smugly) and consequently caused the, uh, seat of the throne to accompany Bucky when he stood. _Long live the queen_!

Bucky had gotten revenge for that one, though, moving Sam’s furniture by a few inches every other hour- slightly enough for it to be essentially undetectable but enough for it to become the impetus for F.R.I.D.A.Y. to upload an obscene number of ‘trip-cam’ videos to the ‘Bird Boy Bugging Out’ album- and dripping coconut oil onto the hardwood floor using a turkey baster while laying in the air vents in order to ensure each fall was truly and undeniably spectacular. The look on Bucky’s face when Sam finally cracked and confronted him about it ( _alright you dirty little skank asshole, face me like a goddamn man, you punk shitbrick, look me in the eye when you abuse me, coward ass bastard_ ) was so gut-bustingly perfect that Peter had gif’ed it and was using it as a reaction image on his social media: Bucky’s head cocked to the side, eyebrows scrunched in an almost believable show of bewilderment, a perfectly smooth voice saying: _but, pal, you clearly needed some moisturizer— cuz you’re such a goddamn flake_.

There was a reason the Winter Soldier was known as the most legendary assassin of all time.

A greater relief than the start of a new month was the reassurance that the prank war would soon come to a glorious cease-fire, seeing as Peter and Harley were set to take off for Rose Hill in the early afternoon of the 13th- a Thursday- and would not be returning until that Sunday evening. It was like all of the softest souls of heaven above had united to sing one otherworldly chord of celebration and it was ringing in Peter’s ears— the happiest sound he had ever known. 

Finally, he could stop being afraid of falling asleep next to Harley and waking up with some sort of taxidermy platypus staring into his eyes. 

Harley talked a lot about his sister in the days leading up to the thirteenth, as it took all of his energy to push the thought of seeing her from his mind and that was energy he was not willing to expend for so fruitless a cause. She was like sonar, a beacon, the sound of it stuck between his ears and leading him home.

Home. Back to Rose Hill. 

For some reason, those two pieces of the puzzle that he imagined his life to be did not fit together the way they used to. There was something wrong with one of the edges; it was both squarer and rounder and just just _just different enough_ that there were gaps between them. They were small gaps, truth be told, but any gap in a puzzle implies an imperfect solution and thus… well, his puzzle was goddamn broke, now wasn’t it? _Mind the gap_.

Harley spent a lot of time writing after that realization. For hours at a time he would pick up his pen and write so furiously and prodigiously that the ink would smear across the page and his hand would cramp as if wielding something much more momentous than a dollar-store pen. But, even as he wrote, he couldn’t riddle it out. _When is a house not a home? What makes my life not mine? How did I lose everything I have known? Why is peace determined to hide_?

Answers evaded him. It was frustrating, simmering beneath his skin like lava or poison or toxic waste. A cocktail of all three: that was what he was made of. 

Peter always listened intently when Harley talked about his sister. It was usually things like _her favorite color is yellow so we oughta wear suits that will match that_ and _she loved jigsaw puzzles_ , though the latter was said with a far-away wistfulness that made Peter wonder whether that was a recent memory of Poppy or one from a long while ago. After all, it had been nearly six months since Harley had last seen her face-to-face, and Peter couldn’t help but wonder what that lost time would do to their relationship.

Harley was blatantly worrying about the same, always fumbling with his sweatshirt sleeves or chewing on his lips til they were beaten and cracked. Peter had taken to letting Harley scrawl with markers on the back of his hands to funnel his energy into something more productive. Besides, he was quite entranced with the flowers and funny planets and cats that he usually ended up sporting and took every opportunity to show off the designs to Ned and MJ as if they were real tattoos. 

“Y’know, Harley, I think you came to the wrong high school. You should be at Art and Design,” Ned appraised, tilting Peter’s hand and tracing over a particularly detailed dahlia flower. The Manhattan High School of Art and Design was a bit of a meme around Midtown for the sole fact that it was the only school with whom they had a sports rivalry. Pitting science kids and art kids against each other was often damaging to property and person, usually ended in tragedy, and was always hilarious. Their football match-ups were historic, to say the least. 

“It’s aight,” said MJ of a lush waterfall scene on Peter’s other hand, which was the equivalent of someone else professing that it belonged in the goddamn Met.

Even Steve had taken notice of the drawings, being that he was an artist himself, and, upon offering Harley a spot in his studio whenever he so desired, caused Harley to nearly pass out in catatonic shock. Steve had frowned and even started to apologize at that, his usual tight-jawed mask of _JusticeDutyGloryHonorIAmVerySeriousFearMyPatrioticWrath_ slipping off to show that wounded golden retriever look he usually only allowed Bucky, Sam, and Nat to see. Harley reassured him that it was a reaction fueled by excitement and that it was synonymous with a _yes holy crap please teach me to paint the second we get back from Tennessee please_.

By the night before the trip, Peter still hadn’t packed— putting it off in favor of spending the week beating the entirety of both Lego Harry Potter apps and staying out until the asscrack of dawn on patrol, coming back with bags like bruises under his eyes and an assortment of cracked ribs and split knuckles as his exhaustion made his defenses sloppier than college freshman on Halloweekend. _Just needed a distraction_ , Peter would mutter upon returning, apologetic at the worried stiffness in Harley’s jaw. And Harley would give him a tight nod and forgive him, too relieved that he was back to rip him a new one.

After cleaning gravel from and bandaging up Peter’s newest ailment- a scrape that spanned the length of his entire left arm- Harley planted himself against the headboard of Peter’s room in the tower with crossed arms and expression like he was a vengeful seraph and it was Armageddon, motherfuckers. Harley, too, looked beyond exhausted, his hair a far cry from its usual shiny waves, bedecked in a seemingly boundless grey sweater that swamped his form from neck to mid-thigh. 

_He_ , for one, had done his packing in time. _He_ was prepared to leave, bag loaded and sitting pretty by the elevator so that it could be loaded into the car the next morning. After school they would be driven to the Compound, from which their special _fat cats only_ plane would bear them like babes to Bethlehem— or, pubescent teenagers to the veritable stinking armpit of the nation. 

So he sat and watched as an omnipotent deity might to make sure Peter packed his bag properly. 

And it was certainly seeming that the kid was clueless as to how packing was done.

“Will I need this?” he asked, frowning, holding up a pair of bathing suit trunks that were patterned in garish orange and purple stripes.

“Well, think about it logically. Are we middle-aged fathers of three going on a family vacation to an all-inclusive in the Bahamas?”

“... No?” 

“Then why-” Harley pressed his hands together like a tent and held them before his face, taking a deep, soul-cleansing breath to vent his frustration, “-why, dear Peter, would you _ever_ need that?”

“Well, isn’t Tennessee south of us? Won’t it be warmer?”

Harley blinked. 

“Peter… have you _ever_. Left the state.”

Peter might have blushed, but it was hard to tell in the low light from his bedside lamp. “Just. Just Germany with Tony. And once or twice into Jersey to visit May’s crazy Italian cousins.”

“ _Madonna mia_ , speaking of the armpit of America,” Harley muttered, shaking his head. That was one of the few Italian phrases he had been able to pick up from Tony, May, and Peter’s conversational slips out of English, and used it as often as humanly possible, much to their dismay. “Well, then, I guess that explains why you’re so hopelessly lost. Yes, it’s south of New York, but not that south. It’s still February. Doesn’t get that far above freezing.”

Peter pulled on an earlobe the way he did when he was uncomfortable. His lips parted as if he were going to say something, then fell closed again as if he thought better of it.

“Hey,” Harley called gently, trying to infuse kindness into his glance like swirled soft-serve, “I’m sorry for teasing you. I’ll be good now, scout’s honor.” He drew a cross over his heart.

Peter’s gaze locked on his and softened slightly, a smile playing at the corners of his lips. His mussed curls bounced as he gave a nod. “Okay. Hey, help me choose what to wear. I don’t want to look like a tourist.”

Harley snorted a laugh. “You’d be the first ever tourist to Rose Hill, Tennessee, that’s for damn sure.”

But he stood from his blanket cocoon and shadowed Peter nonetheless, gesturing to joggers and sweaters and _this one looks better on you_ and _God, no, not the brown one_ and _only if you wear it with your boots_. 

Peter held up a sleek black tie to show Harley. “Does this go with my suit?” he asked anxiously. 

Tony had gifted the boys obscenely expensive suits (but no one would tell Peter the price in order to save the kid from a guilt-fueled meltdown) upon learning that they would be escorting Poppy to her school’s Valentine’s dance. _What, like I’m going to let my kids be seen in some Kohls-ass-discount suit? Yeah, okay, and the Queen won’t live to 100_.

Harley’s was a dark grey, thick wool, with tight legs and a cropped ankle that Tony insisted made him look like a stud. Harley, while twirling in front of the mirror to check out his own ass, wasn’t about to disagree.

Peter’s was a similar cut but in a lovely shade of olive that drew attention to his hickory brown eyes as if they were riches, a spectacle, a magnet, you could not break gaze from them. 

Tony and May had given them both a once over before nodding and tapping their knuckles together in an uncharacteristic fist-bump. Harley was reminded uncannily of the duo of Monte and Lori from _Say Yes to the Dress Atlanta_. 

(Not that he watched it. 

It was just, if Natasha was marathoning it in the living room, then he wasn’t about to leave her there all by her lonesome. And if he gave his own cutthroat feedback on every single dress, well.

Fine. Crucify him. He watched _Say Yes to the Dress_.)

“Yeah, that tie is good,” Harley said, blinking himself back to the present. “With your black shoes. And black socks, for the love of all that’s holy.”

“I know to wear black socks with black shoes!” Peter protested, trying- and failing- to hide the brown dress socks he was about to drop into his bag. He inched sideways towards his closet and gracelessly tripped over his own feet, dropping into a pile on the ground, the offending socks fluttering down and onto his face.

“Yeah, okay, Pete,” Harley mused, shaking his head but pulling up Peter by the hand anyway. _The hell am I supposed to do with you_?

School on Thursday ticked past in a sputtered deluge of moments, as if time was the ball at the end of a long, long chain, and the person pulling it was weaker than skin and bone, staggering along his path. Lunch hour felt more like lunch week. Harley was so antsy that he could hardly eat his salad, stabbing violently at the leaves with a mutinous look on his face.

“ _Ariel, you’ve disobeyed me again_ ,” said MJ in an exaggerated accent.

Harley looked up at her.

“You’re poking pretty hard with your trident there, Triton,” she explained, one eyebrow cocked but her face otherwise emotionless as always. “What’d the spinach do to offend you?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just antsy.”

Peter’s ankle locked covertly around his under the table. A sign of camaraderie; a promise that they were together. It grounded him, his consciousness cemented to the base of his spine, closed back within his skull. 

He didn’t know what exactly it was about the prospect of going back to Rose Hill that made his stomach roll like bicycle wheels and his palms collect pools of sweat but it made him want to take one of Peter’s goddamn tranq pills and sleep til kingdom cometh. It would be much preferable to float, to loose himself from the constraints of feeling and seeing and hearing everything around him in favor of that TV-static-instead-of-blood-and-bones feeling he was all too familiar with. It almost made him resent Peter for goading him to stay present. If floating would make him feel better, why couldn’t he? What made Peter feel as if he had power over when Harley could separate himself from everything around him? 

Logically he knew Peter was just looking out for him, that this was for the best. But he would quite rather stab his fork into his own hand than admit that.

He flicked his gaze over to Ned and the pitying glance he received was enough to make bile rise in his throat. He turned away, pressing his lips. Automatically he reached for Peter’s hand, to draw something on it, to distract himself, but when remembering that this was _lunch_ and Peter was still eating like a normal person, flinched his hand back as if it had been scalded. 

Harley pushed his seat back and stood up sharply, backpack already half on. “Goin’ for a walk,” he murmured, stuffing his shaking fists into his pockets. 

His footfalls seemed to slap against the dirty linoleum even as he pressed each step down with utmost care, trying to silence himself, to leave like an exiled ghost, a wraith, a spirit. It was as if every pair of eyes in the cafeteria was locked on his hunched figure, whispering with their forked tongues, spinning lies on their looms and stitching him into a tapestry that loathed his very existence.

He walked faster. As soon as he was out of the cafeteria he was running, taking the corners so sharply that his sneakers squealed and he nearly slipped. He did not stop running until he reached the door to the library, sucking in a deep breath and smoothing down his hair before stepping inside.

The librarian behind the desk was middle aged and looked an awful lot like a bird, especially with her gaudy purple plastic glasses perched low on her nose. Her glance flicked up at the sound of the door closing behind Harley. 

“Hall pass?” she asked.

Harley’s stomach dropped. “I… I came from lunch so I don’t have one.”

The librarian was unimpressed. “Looks like you’ll have to go back, then. Can’t come to the library without a hall pass.”

Harley frowned, his blood roaring between his ears. The floor seemed to pitch violently to the left and he threw out a hand to steady himself as he muttered almost frantically, “right, right, sorry, I’ll go, sorry-” and spun on his heel, stumbling right back out of the doors. The echoing bang of the door shutting made him jump and he stumbled over his own unsteady feet.

As fate would have it, he bumped head-on into Peter.

“Hey, hey, you’re okay,” Peter said alarmedly, catching Harley by the elbows and leading him away from the doorway. 

“No hall pass,” Harley whispered so quietly that it was almost mouthed. Peter, though, caught it. 

“That’s okay. You don’t need to go to the library, anyway. You didn’t take out any books, bud. Hey, I came to make sure you were alright but I couldn’t find you and I checked the bathroom and the robotics lab and the band room and-” Peter’s babbling broke off when he recognized the disconnect in Harley’s gaze. “Harley, hey, look at me, you gotta look at me.”

Peter dragged them to a stop and lowered them slowly to the ground, their knees digging into the scuffed tiles and their feet folded below them. One hand reached up and he tapped Harley’s cheek twice with his fingers. 

Harley hardly even blinked, his sharp greyish eyes sanded down into something softer, like a sheet of iron melted at the edges, staring at something so distant that Peter could not see it. 

Peter let out a small puff of anguish. It hurt it hurt _viscerally and truly_ to see Harley like that: right in front of him but miles away. 

He reached out and clasped Harley’s hand in his, looping their fingers together and squeezing, rubbing a thumb over his knuckles. 

With a clumsy, leaden tongue, he began to list things that might bring Harley back. “Okay, uh. It’s just you and me, Harley. You’re Harley, engineer-writer-cool-guy-supremo, and I’m Peter, the so-called Bane of Your Existence, and we’re sitting in the hallway outside of the library at school. It’s, uh-” he checked his watch, “twelve fifteen and we’re getting picked up by Tony, our kinda-dad, in three hours so we can go to Rose Hill, which is where you live, almost. Sometimes. Aw, man. I’m really bad at this.” A shuddering sigh. “The hallway smells like cafeteria pizza and kinda like cat piss since that kid Cadence has been hiding a cat in their backpack for three weeks and it went rogue yesterday and peed all over the second floor. It was crazy. Anyway. If you listen real close you can kinda hear the buzzing from the robotics lab. Abraham from Academic Decathlon is in there welding something strange. It was, like. Well. You would probably say it looked like a cross between a gallon of milk and an assortment of sea cucumbers.” 

Peter was sure a ghost of a smile touched Harley’s lips at that. He found himself grinning in response, relief flooding him, warm in his veins. “There you are, Harls. Come on back to me.”

Harley blinked once, then again, more aggressively. His gaze sank down to his lap. “Don’t want to,” he mumbled, sounding young in his defiance. 

“Why not?”

“Nervous.”

“What are you nervous about?” Peter asked, face flickering into a frown. Of course, he knew generally what had been ticking in Harley’s brain. It was obvious that the weight of going back home was distressing enough to him that he had forced himself out of his own body to bear it more easily. But assuming it and hearing Harley admit it were two very different things.

“Rose Hill.” Then, “‘fraid it’s gonna be different. Or, that I’ll be different.”

“Would that be so bad?”

Harley flinched back as if he had been burned, his hands ripping out of Peter’s and coming up against his chest as he heaved in a breath. And, frankly, that was answer enough.

Peter instinctually scooted backwards, giving Harley the space he needed as he grounded himself.

“Sorry,” Harley breathed, raking his hands through his hair. He had begun to tremble as if electric currents ran through him rather than veins.

“Don’t be. You didn’t do anything wrong,” Peter reassured. “You all the way back with me?” he asked, even gentler.

“Yeah,” Harley said with a shaky nod, looking back up at Peter. His cheeks were saturated red with blood rush, but his gaze was firm. 

Peter gnawed on his lip for a moment. “Do you want to talk about it? Or will bringing it up make it worse?” A moment’s pause. “I just don’t want you to phase out on me again.”

Harley reached out to grab Peter’s hand in his again, craving the comfort of it. “I don’t really want to talk about it. I think I’m just having, like. Anticipatory anxiety. It’ll be fine once we’re there.”

Peter frowned. “If there’s anything I can do to make it easier, sooner, you know you can always ask me. Right?”

Harley made a face that said no but nodded. “Sorry you had to come hunt me down.”

Peter gave him a half-grin. “Didn’t have to. Wanted to. We okay?”

Harley scrounged up a small smile to shoot back. “We’re okay.”

After that, Peter spent the day attached to his phone, making sure to answer every text from Harley the moment it came through, whether it was inviting him to play a round of GamePigeon Eight Ball or questioning whether Peter remembered to pack enough underwear. He selfishly hoped that Harley would reach out to him to talk about something serious- i.e. what was bothering him about going home- but was unsurprised when the bell had rung and the boy was still just as tremulous and soft-spoken as before. At least he was lucid this time.

 _Jesus. What a sad day it is to be thankful for something as simple as lucidity_.

Tony waited for them in the parking lot, arms crossed as he leaned against the door of his ‘incognito Prius.’ He had a knit hat pulled onto his head, but it was a poor disguise, indeed, as he was still attracting whispers and stares from the sea of students piling into cars and buses. 

It wasn’t a secret that Peter and Harley interned with Tony, but it sure as hell was a secret that Harley lived with him. And they fully planned on keeping it that way. Indefinitely. Harley didn’t need to deal with the attention that would come with that sort of information going public.

Nonetheless, though it was becoming a more regular occasion to see Tony Stark- the nickel-titanium-alloy bastard himself- picking the boys up from school, it still retained enough shock-factor to initialize a stir. 

When they reached the car, Tony shot them a benign grin and pulled their backpacks from their shoulders, tossing them into the trunk atop their suitcases. They slid into the backseat, the plucky- and uncharacteristic for Tony- sound of Led Zeppelin’s _Going to California_ as their soundtrack. 

Peter, however, loved that song dearly. Him and May liked to listen to it together. It reminded them that they could keep going. Could go anywhere. Could always start again. 

It was a special, transcendent sort of song.

“How was your day, kiddos? Pretty quiet back there,” Tony noticed five minutes into their drive, peering at them through the rearview mirror.

Harley’s head was resting heavily on Peter shoulder, Peter’s head leaning atop it. “Long,” Peter answered frankly for the two of them.

Tony hmphed. “Bad long, or just long?”

Peter waited a moment to see if Harley would answer. When he didn’t, he spoke again. “Somewhere between the two. Glad it’s over.”

Tony continued to look at them. “ _Cucciolo_ ,” he addressed Peter directly now, straying into Italian as if it were a secret code. _Cucciolo_ was one of Peter’s official nicknames from Tony. Tony wasn’t an idiot; he used it because, when he did, Peter’s face glowed as if he had been lit up from the inside out. Harley, on the other hand, was addressed by monikers including, but not limited to, “ _asshole, ungrateful twerp, honey_ , and _Chicken Little_ ,” resultant of Tony’s insistence that Harley bore an uncanny resemblance to the cartoon character. Harley would deny it to his last breath. Peter only denied it when Harley was around. 

“ _Cucciolo, cos'è successo a tuo fratello oggi_?” 

Peter cringed. “ _Non lo so. Penso sia nervoso perché deve tornare a casa, ma non capisco perché_.”

Tony hummed under his breath for a moment. 

“You know, I’m right here,” Harley grumbled. He pulled his face out of Peter’s shoulder and crossed his arms. “Kinda makes me feel like a schmuck when you talk about me like I’m not.”

“What makes you think we’re talking about you?” Tony asked. “We could have been talking about the decline of jukebox culture but you just jump to assumptions-”

“You don’t want to tell me, fine. I’ll get it out of Peter later,” Harley promised.

Peter audibly gulped.

The rest of the car ride was quick, as Tony drove like a demon late to hell who was also on about a pound of crack cocaine. The glass and metal of the city faded into a crystalline snow blanket, capping the bare boughs of the trees and glimmering on the yellowed grass. It was a beautiful ride, really. 

Peter started snoring somewhere around Chester and didn’t wake up until they pulled into the horrifically long driveway of the compound, only spurred out of sleep by Harley shaking him.

“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” Harley said wryly.

Peter gave a long-suffering groan that cracked in his throat and changed pitches more than a recorder in the mouth of a second-grader. 

The plane was waiting for them, but so was Pepper Potts, so it was obvious where they went first.

Pepper dropped a kiss on each of their heads and bid them a safe flight, promising plenty of New York pizza upon their return.

Tony walked them all the way to the door of the jet, refusing to let them carry their own bags even as they complained with every step. 

“Come on, old man, you’re gonna pop a hip or something.”

“Really, Mister Stark, I can carry them! What good is super strength if I don’t use it to aid civilians with menial tasks?”

“Menial?” repeated Tony with an appraising look. “Didn’t know you knew words that fancy, Parker.”

“I make flashcards when Harley uses a big word so I can keep up with him,” Peter explained. 

“Gonna have to make quite a lot of cards this weekend, Pete,” Harley forewarned. “Little town, bigger words. Gotta bring equilibrium back to the universe.”

Tony stowed their bags before coming back down the stairs to them. He looked as if he was struggling to say something for a moment, then dropped down onto one knee so that he was looking up at them. “I just want to remind you both that if anything at all feels weird or goes wrong, you let me know immediately. I don’t mean crime stuff, Spider-Boy. I mean _life_ stuff. If you need out, call me. No questions asked. I can get a jet there in an hour if I have to. I can do anything. I’m goddamn Tony Stark. And God forbid someone gets in the way of me helping my kids.” He looked at them very seriously, his gaze lingering on Harley’s set jaw and tight-lipped glare. “If it’s too much, I’ll be there. Just remember, please. This will be a fun weekend. Boys taking on the world. Don’t break it. God, don’t break the world. I’m rich but not that rich.”

Peter snorted a laugh. 

Tony looked up at them, so fond that it was nauseating. “I love you both very much. Now get on the plane before I say something else stupid and sappy.”

They each hugged Tony in turn, quick but tight, practical but purposeful. 

Tony flicked Harley on the ear before he could go. “If you bring Peter back with an ugly Tennessean accent I will disown you. That is a promise, not a threat.”

A smile cracked on Harley’s face. In his thickest drawl, he answered, “don’ you worry abou’ a _thang_ , Anthony. He’ll be safer than a tube sock on prom night.”

Tony blinked. “Not even gonna pretend to know what that means.”

Harley and Peter mounted the stairs in tandem, shoulders pressed tight so that they could fit through the doorway side by side. 

Just before stepping across the gap, Peter turned to Harley, a deadpan look on his face. “Did I ever tell you my parents died in a plane crash?” Peter said. 

Harley’s jaw dropped but before he could cut in a word Peter clapped his hands together once and said, “Onward, Rose fuckin’ Hill!” marching into the plane without qualm.

Harley turned back to Tony’s watching figure with a panicked look. Tony just shrugged as if this was normal Peter behavior and to be expected. Harley couldn’t exactly disagree with that. He shook his head and continued on into the plane. 

He fell into the wide leather seat across from Peter, crossing his hands over his lap. The plane was quite nice, as was to be expected from a Tony Stark jet. The inside was pristinely white, the seats a deep navy and wide enough to comfortably seat three Harleys side-by-side. It smelled suspiciously of tomato soup and eau de stale Whiskey-breath, which made Harley wonder if there was a mini-bar somewhere on the plane. 

When he voiced that thought to Peter, he was treated with a kick to the shin and a promise of no more Indiana Jones marathons if he so much as touched a bottle of liquor.

Harley sighed deeply.

The engine began to roar.

Peter, with a stutter in his chest, popped one of his elephant tranquilizers. 

Harley chewed two melatonin gummies.

Their eyes were heavy before they took off. They were both out before they reached cruising altitude. 

They slept miraculously dreamless sleeps all the way to Tennessee. 

They landed in what could generously be called a landing strip, nowhere near large or developed enough to be an airport. It was nothing more than two long lines of pavement traced right through the grass with one spindly air-traffic control tower standing sentinel beside it. It was not the safest situation, but, frankly, so few people made Rose Hill a destination of their travel whims that it worked just fine for them. 

When they dismounted the plane, all rumpled hair and stale, sleepy breath, the sun was setting on the first of many, many fields they would be seeing. The grass was yellowed from winter’s heedless touch, but the air was crisp and dry and the sky was powder blue where the sun wasn’t melting it into saturated shades of plum and marigold and thus it seemed to be teeming with vitality. 

Harley sucked a deep breath in through his nose and the corner of his lips turned up. “Smell that, Pete?”

Peter sniffed, his nose wrinkling automatically as the unabashedly offensive flavor of cow shit permeated his sinuses. 

“That’s world-class dookie, Parker. New York may smell like piss, but Rose Hill might just be the crap capital of the country. And we’re damn proud of it.”

Peter blinked. “God, what have I gotten myself into?”

Harley tried for his Cheshire grin but it landed a little short, closer to a grimace. “A crazy weekend, I’m sure. Come on, let’s off.”

A car awaited them at the edge of the pavement strip, idling on the grass. A man in an ill-fitting suit stood beside it, a cardboard sign that read “Stark’s kids (kinda)” in his hands. 

Peter couldn’t help but grin exasperatedly, far beyond accustomed to Tony’s antics by now (but still enjoying the awkwardness of them as much as he had at the beginning). 

They squished themselves into the back seat and gave the weary man the address to Harley’s childhood home. As soon as the car pulled out, Harley had begun to wring his hands like an addict drying out. The repeated motion set Peter’s anxiety building like an orchestral crescendo so he looped his pinky finger around Harley’s, effectively stopping the motion for the sake of both of their sanities.

“Can you,” started Harley, his voice choked. Peter’s heart ached. “Can you talk about something?” he finished, gasping as if the words required a great deal of him— and it certainly seemed as if they had.

Peter, without further ado, began to expound very dramatically and with much hand-waving about the veracity of the tale of the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, arguing so wholeheartedly that the woman must have had some early form of supersoldier serum and survived the attack by the Reds and was still living somewhere to this day that Harley himself might have believed it had he not been hearing it all through a mental curtain so visceral as to be real steel.

Peter was just taking a great gasp of breath in preparation to forage on in his exposition when the car rolled to a stop.

Harley turned wildly towards the window, eyes wide and shiny and lifeless as quarters. Peter could hear the ferocious beating of Harley’s heart like a drum between his ears and thought, momentarily, darkly, that it sounded an awful lot like a funeral march. He could almost smell Harley’s anxiety, as if the boy’s usual warm, cinnamony scent took on a sharper, bitter flavor. 

Peter clapped a hand on Harley’s shoulder and urged him out of the car, figuring that it was better to bite the bullet and march into the battle head-on than allow Harley’s nerves to stew and fester, debilitating him. 

Harley’s every breath stuttered. The soft song of the birds sounded as if it were coming from somewhere far away. Bags weighed down on each of his shoulders. He felt as if he was on the precipice of something, his blood rushing upwards as if to tilt his balance further onto solid ground, top-heavy tipping away from the edge. Fruitlessly. He took a deep breath and looked up.

And all at once, with the shack that had held his hand and raised him right there before him, he knew exactly why it did not feel like a home— why his life’s puzzle was inoperable, incompletable. Because it was full of ghosts, goddamn sleepless ghosts that lurked around every corner with smoky fingers reaching for him and wide unseeing eyes locked on his every movement beckoning calling drawing him towards a pain he had not felt since his father had left. 

His father was the most lingering presence. All forms of him. On the dilapidated front porch, jaw set. In the kitchen, beer bottle loose in his grasp. Poppy raised onto one of his shoulders and belly-laughing, eyes twinkling. A hand around his mother’s neck. Construction hat on his head. Yelling so fiercely that spit flew from his mouth. Everywhere. He was everywhere. And Harley couldn’t breathe.

At some point Peter had moved in front of Harley, one hand closed firm around his chin and his eyes intently locked upon the other’s. He had absolutely no clue what was going through Harley’s mind but the frozen look of panic in his eyes and the shallow rise and fall of his chest were enough to let him know he needed to do all in his power to calm him down. “It’s okay, Harley. You’re okay. Take your time. We don’t have to do this, remember what Tony said? We don’t have to, we can leave if it’s too much-”

“Harley?” called a voice. 

Harley’s head shot up as if he had been shocked. “Poppy,” he breathed. Then, louder and desperate but soft like melting butter, “ _Poppy_.”

He stumbled from Peter’s grasp and Peter let him go, shoving his hands into his pockets and watching with a fretful sort of smile as Harley scooped up his sister and spun her around in his arms, her laugh sweet with the fruit of youth’s innocence.

Something was truly wrong. Harley was spiraling hard and it was because of his home. That much was obvious. But, seeing as Peter knew next to nothing about Harley’s pre-New York life and was highly aware of the fact, he had no hint as to what could be the impetus. 

Harley had seemed so excited to come home, to see his sister and mother. He always had something to say about the town, whether it be reviling the closed-minded population or nostalgic for the open air and gentle warm soughing breath of breeze through the treetops. Now, something was flipped, completely upended and the boy was sprawled out on the pavement, choking. 

Now, it was a question of whether or not he would extend a hand and allow Peter to pull him back onto his feet.

Harley knelt so he could be closer to her eye level held his sister’s face between his shaking hands, scowling at her. “Why did you grow? I explicitly told you that you were not allowed to grow until I came back, and here you are— four inches taller! And you’re sprouting even more right in front of my eyes!” 

Poppy gave the type of eyeroll that only a fourteen year old girl could give, all unbridled sass and eyeliner on her lower lashes. “I’m a teenager now, Harley. You don’t need to baby me.” 

Peter blinked owlishly. Her accent was _fervid_ , strong and fierce and shaping every syllable and sound that fell from her mouth as if it were pressed against the curve of a spoon before tumbling forth. It was a rather stark contrast to the twang that only scribbled at the edges of Harley’s sentences. 

It made Peter wonder if he repressed it— forced it down like a wooden block into the hole of a child’s puzzle. If it was a lost piece of him. 

Peter quite liked the sound of it, he thought. 

As it were, the accent seemed to become stronger as he spoke to his sister. With it, the lines around his eyes and scrawled across his forehead evened out. He looked calmer than he had all week. 

All Peter could do was stare. Relieved, sure. Impressed, yeah. Confused, more than anything. 

Poppy brought their conversation to a lull when she cleared her throat and gestured with a shoulder towards Peter. Her pale eyebrows climbed. A silent bid for an introduction.

“Where are my manners?” Harley muttered, shaking his head.

“You left ‘em in New York,” Poppy teased.

“He can’t have,” said Peter with an exaggerated thoughtful expression. “He didn’t have them there, either. I figured he must’ve left them out here with you.”

“My two best pals conspiring against me already,” Harley huffed. “Figures. Peter Benjamin Parker, this is Poppy June Keener. Poppy June, this Peter Benjamin.”

“Just Peter,” he corrected, smiling and holding out a hand for Poppy to shake. 

She considered it for a moment. “Am I gonna get plague from your New York rats if I touch you before you wash your hands?”

Peter made an offended sort of quacking noise. “Well, how do- how could I-” he sputtered, “how do I know I won’t get Mad Cow Disease from shaking _your_ hand?” he finally settled on, looking proud at his clever joke. 

Poppy gave a shout of laughter that rang in Peter’s ears. _God, that laugh could have come right out of Harley’s mouth and I hardly would have known the difference_. “You’re alright, even if you have a dumb accent,” Poppy said, taking his hand and giving it a firm shake in her own tiny one.

“You’re not so bad yourself, even if _I_ can’t understand half the words _you’re_ saying,” Peter appraised, giving her one of his face-splitting grins. 

“Is this how Tony felt when we met?” Harley asked Peter, one eyebrow cocked.

“Something like that, but probably about fifteen times more potently since we had just been in a fight with Flash.”

“You’re still fighting with people in New York?” Poppy asked, her gaze locking on Harley reproachfully. “I thought we weren’t doing stuff like that anymore.”

Peter frowned. _Still_?

“Pop, you know I only ever throw a punch when someone else threw one first. This was no different,” Harley said, a blend of chagrined and weary. 

“You used to get in fights before New York?” Peter asked, unable to keep the question in.

Harley winced and Poppy’s eyes widened in almost comical synchronization. 

“Had to sharpen my right hook somewhere, Pete,” Harley said after a long moment.

Peter opened his mouth to say something- what, he didn’t know- when he was interrupted by another shout. 

“Harley James Keener, how long are you gonna sit out there and pretend your momma doesn’t exist?”

Harley shot to his feet from where he was still crouching beside his sister. “Sorry, momma,” he offered feebly, before turning around to look at Peter head-on. “This is like the boss level, Parker, so turn down your surly New York disposition and try on a bit of southern charm, will ya?”

Peter scoffed. “As _if_ I could ever be surly!”

Harley nodded, a smile already cracking on his face. “Yeah, it was a joke. Even I couldn’t take it seriously.” He shook his head. “Onward, fools.”

He pushed the door open, allowing Poppy to strut in, followed by Peter carrying both of their bags on his shoulders. 

It was a quaint sort of place, with old-fashioned wallpaper that looked like a brainchild of the 70’s, all orange and yellow flowers, and dark brown hardwood floors. Peter could see the fridge from where he stood in the entryway, all speckled with magnets and notes. The whole place smelled of dust and fabric softener and tobacco and it was so blatantly lived-in that it brought a smile to Peter’s face. It felt like home in that strange way that came sometimes when you were in a place that you had never been but still found comfort there because other people found comfort there. 

Harley was having a much different experience. 

His knees had locked almost the second he had passed through the doorway, stuck still as a marble statue. His eyes were wide and staring, fingers limp in Poppy’s hand. 

_And Harley was six and small and trembling and his father was running down the stairs and leaning against the stove and flicking through TV channels and lacing up his work boots and staring out the window and_ -

“Momma! It’s Harley— it’s happening again!” Poppy’s frightened voice cut through the house. 

Peter caught Harley as he slumped, crumbled, dropped like a stone. “Hey,” Peter whispered, frantic. “Hey, Harley, you’re okay.” He moved one arm from under Harley’s arms to press against his cheek. Harley flinched so hard as he caught the movement in the corner of his eye that he collapsed from his knees onto his back, leaning away and gasping, “ _no, please, don’t_ ,” as if he were a sinner repenting at the feet of God. 

Footsteps came thundering down the stairs. “Oh, baby,” a soft voice floated down. 

Charlotte Keener used to be in movies and she looked like it. It was her button nose and big blue eyes that were passed down to her children, along with her wavy blond hair and long, long legs. But now, as she looked at her oldest child rumpled on the floor like disregarded laundry, her face was sculpted into the perfect depiction of mournful desolation. 

She dropped gracefully to her knees beside Peter and grabbed one of Harley’s hands in her own. “Hey, baby. It’s just me. Just momma.” 

Peter could see the anguish in Harley’s eyes as he attempted to focus upon the source of the voice. 

“He’s not here, baby, never again,” said Charlotte under her breath. Her gaze was strong against Harley’s and it was clear that his fire came right from her hearth. “Your daddy’s not here,” she repeated, and Peter felt his last moment of blissful ignorance come crashing around him like a toppled wall, the type that once held out beasts and demons but now was just dust at his feet. 

_Your daddy’s not here_. Well, that wasn’t so hard to riddle out. 

Peter felt his jaw slacken and suddenly it was impossible- absolutely unthinkable- to look at his best friend. He just. Couldn’t. Like a voracious fire burning too bright and too tall as it swallowed everything around it in one tremendous gulp: that was Harley as he fell, toppled over the edge of Heaven’s clouds and plummeted straight and fast into a dark, impenetrable depth. And it was far too bright and far too profane to watch.

Something in him ached. It burned. It froze. It stung and cut and marred and gutted him, skinned him clean to the bone until he was fruitless, meaningless, skeletal. 

His Harley. _God, his Harley_.

It made sense, Peter guessed. What else could drive Harley from his home so completely that he would leave behind his child sister and his aching mother in pursuit of escape? What force was so powerful that it could rip the most unyielding of trees out by the roots and spur it to replant somewhere else, to erase itself from everywhere it had been, to start life anew in an unfamiliar environment? What other natural disaster could rake its claws across the picture of suburban heaven and repaint it in the image of hell?

 _He left when I was five or so. Didn’t know him that well. Wouldn’t want to_.

 _He doesn’t, uh, matter. Didn’t have much of a positive effect on me_. 

_Is it weird to wish Tony was my real dad_?

 _God, I just. Don’t like it when things fly at my face. Scares the everloving shit out of me_.

Yeah. It made sense.

It pinched at Peter’s chest, not having caught it sooner. God, he was supposed to be _smart_ and he couldn’t even deduce the traumatic backstory of his brother’s life. All the clues were there. It all fit. 

And now Harley had come home to be here for his sister, and he had brought Peter with him. 

_It’s an opportunity_ , Peter thought to himself, trying to reassure his uneasy mind. _An opportunity to fix this. To help him through his pain_.

And he let that feeling build, saturate him like a coating of resin, making him impervious to the onslaught of doubt and empathy and exhaustion that was threatening to make him keel over just as spectacularly as Harley had.

Charlotte Keener had collected her son in her arms as if holding the keystone upon which her universe was built, her touch delicate but full of intention. “You’re alright, baby. Just us. You can breathe.”

Harley’s hands fisted in the back of her uniform shirt. “Sorry,” he breathed, his eyes still wide and unseeing. 

“Never let it be said that the Keeners don’t make an entrance,” Charlotte teased, pulling back from Harley to look him in the eyes.

He gave her a watery smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Poppy dropped a hand on one of his knees and he hardly even flinched at the contact.

It was a moment before he turned to Peter, his face unmasked to display a perfect storm of surrender, embarrassment, and a bit of pride— as if saying _there are my cards, what are you going to do about it_? Almost daring him to laugh.

Peter, of course, would do no such thing. And he knew Harley far too well to paper him with pity. “As far as trauma episodes go, I’d give that a solid seven-point-five out of ten. The fall was good, but you could’ve upped the drama-factor with some more panicked mumbling, or maybe a saucy scream of terror. Oh, oh, or fainting. That’s always a crowd-pleaser.”

There was a moment where all three sets of Keener eyes were locked on him and it felt an awful lot like burning at the stake, but then the most beautiful, shocked laughter came pouring from Harley’s mouth in waves and the tension was washed away, like baptism, like they were cleaner now. “Screw you, Peter. Screw right off,” Harley said, but his grin was real and that was all that mattered. 

Peter shot him a cheeky smile, allowing his eyes to do the talking. _Later. We’ll talk later. But I’m here for you now, and always. Say the word and I’m yours_.

Harley struggled out of his mother’s grasp, placing a quick kiss on her cheek before he did. “Momma,” he said, wiping his still-shaking fists over his eyes. “This is Peter. I know he isn’t the fruit of your loins- God knows he ain’t quite pretty enough to be- but he’s my brother from New York.”

The smile those words wrung from Peter was like the warmth of the sun beating down in the dead of summer, ice pop sticky fingers, fireworks booming in the distance, nose strawberry pink with sunburn. He held out a hand for Charlotte to shake. “It’s lovely to meet you, Ms. Keener. You did a pretty darn good job with him, even if he’s kinda a jerk.”

Charlotte gave him a wry but somewhat diluted grin- clearly experiencing the same whiplash as the rest of them as Harley settled back into himself for the second time that day- and squeezed his hand in hers. “Thank you for keeping him in line while he’s away,” she said sincerely.

“Oh, he’s a pleasure. Really. Couldn’t ask for a better almost-brother.”

“Now you haven’t just got a brother: you’ve got a sister and momma, too,” interrupted Poppy fiercely, grinning wide enough to show all her teeth. 

Peter felt distinctly mushy. “My first sister, _wow_. I must be the luckiest guy in the whole world.”

Charlotte shot a look at Harley. “Oh, I like him a lot. We’re keeping him.”

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” answered Harley, already pushing himself off the floor.

Peter made a sound of protest to Harley’s movement, reaching out to try and keep him on the ground for a moment longer. Harley was always _go, go, go_ and no time to breathe, especially when it was the worst possible thing for him to be, and, God, Peter wanted to slow him down for once. It was more than likely that it would be beneficial for him to catch his breath before foraging onward. Recalibration was necessary. Rest and recuperation. Harley was not a machine, as much as he liked to pretend he was. And Peter knew better than anyone that he was running himself perilously close to empty.

Harley imitated the sound and used Peter’s extended hands to wrench him to his feet alongside Harley. 

“Let’s go upstairs. I’ll show you my room and we can drop our bags off.”

Peter stared at him, concerned but not pitying, trying to riddle out the reason why Harley was so intent upon self-destruction. “Harley,” he said slowly, each syllable rolling over his tongue like cold glass marbles, “are you sure you want to do that?”

He tried to infuse the words with meaning. _You remember what Tony said? Please take it seriously. I don’t want you hurting. We can leave right now and it will make no difference to me_.

For a moment, it seemed as though Harley was unsure, his gaze darting from Peter to his mother and then to the stairs before finally settling back on Peter. His eyes were alight, but not with their usual spark, not with mischief and wit and light, but as if the second circle of hell was raging within them and what it thirsted for was vengeance. “I’m pretty damn sure, Pete.”

And without further discussion they mounted the stairs, Peter feeling an awful lot like he was climbing Calvary to his own crucifixion. _No, that would be too merciful. A certain death? Too kind. No, I’m waltzing towards an imminent attack, one where I’m certain to sustain an injury but the injury will be something stupid like getting my ear chopped off and then I’ll have to wait to bleed out for death to take me into her waiting arms_ -

The stairs were lined with framed photographs: the three Keeners, never with Harley’s father. Peter couldn’t help but be sorely glad of that fact, sure that the man deserved nothing more than to be erased. Reviling him expended too much energy; it gave him more credit than he was due. But pretending as if he had never been relevant enough to even besmirch the face of the earth while he lived there? That was a fate worse than any other.

Harley came to an abrupt pause, Peter nearly bumping into his back. He raised one of his hands and ghosted his fingers over the edge of a frame that encased the image of him, no more than five, with a gap-toothed grin and dimples like craters and Poppy in a bundle in his arms looking more like a fuzzy-headed dandelion than a human being.

“I began to feel so safe in the city that I forgot how terrified I was every second of every day while living in this house,” Harley said frankly. “I genuinely. Forgot.” He looked away from the frame, catching Peter’s gaze with a desperation that nearly knocked Peter’s legs out from under him. “I know he’s not here, but I see him everywhere. He’s everywhere.”

Peter reached out his empty hand- slowly, as to not startle Harley- and let it fall onto Harley’s back, between his shoulder blades. With a gentle pressure, he lead the other up the remaining stairs. 

When they reached Harley’s bedroom- clearly labelled with one of those fake license plates engraved with his name nailed onto the door- Peter let his arm fall. He dropped his bag onto the ground, then reached out and pulled Harley’s bag from his shoulder. 

The physical weight being lifted from him seemed to release some strange tension from Harley’s body and he sagged, hunching forward and bowing his head. 

“Oh, _Harley_ ,” Peter whispered, his voice catching as tears pooled hot in his eyes. 

Harley’s hands raised and the heels of them pressed hard against his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said, broken as a shattered vase a scratched record a candle melted to the wick. “I’m _so fucking sorry_ ,” he gasped, and then they were both crying and clinging to each other like magnets of opposite charge.

“Don’t you _dare_ apologize, Harley Keener,” Peter sniffed, forcing Harley’s head into the crook of his neck even as Harley stood an entire head taller than him, as if trying to mold Harley into something smaller, something more receptive of comfort. “You were never obligated to tell me anything. And you never will be. But,” he pulled away enough to look Harley in the eyes, “I’m glad I know now. No, I’m glad I do, because now I can tell you that I am still in your corner, Harley, no matter what. No matter what. This wouldn’t get rid of me. The only way I’m going anywhere is if you tell me to leave, and no other way,” Peter finished, his voice fierce and thick. 

“I should have just told you,” Harley said miserably. “God, it’s part of why I moved in with Tony and I still didn’t tell you. I’ve been lying to you for months, Pete, _months_. I told Tony and Pepper and I didn’t tell you because I couldn’t, I couldn’t bare it if you looked at me differently. And I certainly couldn’t bare you thinking of me as some tragic trauma story victim or- or knowing how lame I am for letting it mess me up so bad. I haven’t seen the guy in a _decade_ , Peter, and I still lose my shit walking into my house. That isn’t normal. And you shouldn’t have to deal with it.” _And this isn’t even the full truth_ , some hissed voice taunted Harley. _Even now as you kiss the hem of his goddamn robes you can’t tell him everything stewing inside of you, everything that made you the way you are. And when he learns that? Well, you can be sure he’ll be gone in a minute_.

“Stop,” Peter said. “Harley, stop. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me. And- do you want me to be honest? Of course you do. I’m gonna tell you something, Harley. I am going to look at you differently- no, shh, stop. I’m going to look at you differently because however brave I thought you were before, I know now that you’re about a million times braver.”

“Zero product property implies any number multiplied by zero is-”

“Harley.”

“Sorry.”

Peter sniffled a bit and rubbed his nose. “I’m not going to pretend that I’m not surprised and- and- honestly, Harley, I have no idea what to say. I just. _God_ , I wish I could fix it, to make it easier for you,” he breathed, his voice choked.

Harley shrugged and turned away, settling on the edge of his bed as he rubbed at his eyes. A long moment passed before Harley shrugged once, twice, and then dropped his head between his knees. “I guess,” he started before words seemed to fail him. “I guess I’m glad you know. So it doesn’t feel like I’m hiding that from you anymore.”

Peter didn’t know how to answer that. So he took a long look around Harley’s room, hoping to catch something that would be a good enough conversation topic to drag them out of the rut they had dug out, jumped into, and then began to bury themselves within.

Harley’s clusterfuck excuse for a bedroom did not disappoint. Pillows and blankets were strewn in one corner, a precarious stack of books atop them and one of those fancy Himalayan salt lamps glowing all salmon and bronze. The wall beside his bed was papered in what Peter could just make out to be pages cut out from books. His desk was dominated by a computer that looked like it came from the desk of Chief of Staff Eisenhower circa 1948, all thick screen and awkwardly tall keys. In another corner leaned a baseball bat, a guitar case, and two meter-sticks taped together to make one extended measuring stick.

But most interesting to Peter, true city nymph borne of glass panels and concrete tiles, was the strange lump of shiny blue material with plastic sticks poking out of it like a hedgehog’s spires.

And thus came the means for his plan. 

“We’re going camping,” he announced, satisfaction in his tone. 

“Uh, what?”

“That’s a tent, right?”

“Yeah?”

“And your backyard is, like, 80 million acres of field.”

“One and a half, but sure.”

“So we’re gonna camp in your backyard.”

Harley stared. 

Peter gnawed his lip for a second before conceding to the fact that Harley would never allow a plan to come to fruition if he were skeptical of the plan’s nature. 

“I have a plan. It’s a good plan, I swear it. Since so many of your memories of being home are, well, in almost your words, _unsafe_ , I think we oughta try to make some new, safer ones so that you can still feel happy here when you come to see your sister and your mom.” 

Harley’s jaw had slowly slackened as Peter talked, and by the last word he was staring fully open-mouthed in shock. “Peter… I could never ask you to put that much effort into something like this-”

“Good thing you’re not asking; I’m telling. Let’s pick up some blankets, Harls. We have _memories to rewrite_.”

And so they did. 

They plucked up the tent and every blanket and pillow they could find; bundled up in layers of sweaters and sweatshirts until they could hardly bend at the joints for being so swaddled; they made a large pot of tea and filled thermos bottles with it, the scent of chamomile soft and comforting and drawing them finally towards true calmness. At the last moment, Harley snatched a small black box from one of his desk drawers. At Peter’s inquisitive glance, he shot back a smile- _a real smile_ that weakened Peter’s knees with relief and giddiness- not bothering to explain what the box held. 

The tent-blanket-fort-nest took all of ten minutes to build, but it was enough for their hands to grow stiff and their fingers cold at the tips. Peter especially struggled to warm himself, what with the lack of thermoregulative abilities from his spider-half. 

Harley took care of that quickly, snatching both of Peter’s hands in his own and holding them against his chest below the blankets. 

They had poised themselves in a humorously irregular position within the tent: their hat-bearing heads stuck out of the unzippered opening like strawberry stems but the remainder of their bodies laying under the cover of the fabric, wrapped in blankets.

As the sky turned the colors of cobalt and pitch, something miraculous began to happen.

Peter’s heart rate picked up, his eyes widening in absolute shock. He felt frozen, stuck, trapped, but he knew he had never been so alive. His every atom thrummed with the pulse of the universe as the moon gave a languid blink. And, as if pressed with a needle through a sheet, the stars began to appear, all silvery Columba and pinprick Orion.

“Harley,” Peter breathed, as if it was the only word he still knew.

“I know,” he whispered back, the awe catching him in full force as if it were his first time seeing an entire universe spread above him for the taking.

“ _Cristo_ ,” Peter said, and it was choked. “There’s- there’s so many. It doesn’t even look _real_.”

Harley squeezed Peter’s hands.

“It looks fake,” Peter continued. “But it feels… heavy. Like it’s sitting on my chest.”

And looking up at the boundless spread, Harley felt he knew exactly what Peter meant.

He freed one of his hands and fumbled in the tent without looking, accidentally grabbing Peter’s knees and wrenching their blankets partially off as he searched for-

“Use these,” he said quietly, unsheathing his old binoculars and pressing them into Peter’s hand.

Peter pressed them urgently to his eyes and Harley watched him in a fascination so rapt that it was comparable to Peter’s while staring up at the firmament in all of its speckled glory. 

Peter whaled a slap down onto Harley’s shoulder. “ _Was that a shooting star_?” he demanded shrilly.

Harley squinted. “I didn’t see it, but you should make a wish just in case it was. Don’t want to go wasting that.”

Peter scrunched up his face as he concentrated on making The Perfect Wish. And once he had, all grinning in satisfaction, he turned to Harley. “I won’t tell you what it was because then it won’t come true, but I will tell you that you would whack- uh,” Peter broke off, face freezing in exaggerated fear as a soft rustling came from somewhere in the grass of the field around them. “What was that?”

“Probably Mrs. Next-Door’s cow Orpheus. He’s always getting into places he shouldn’t.”

Peter squinted. “There is something coming-” 

Harley gaped at him. Had he not just explained this? “Yeah, a fucking _cow_ , dumbass.” 

“My Spidey-Senses are tingling, something is approaching us-” 

Harley pushed up on one elbow, gesturing spiritedly towards the hunkering figure in the grass all of fifteen feet from them, aglow in the silver light of the moon. “Open your _eyes_ , dipshit, it’s a bigass brown _cow_!” 

“MY SPIDEY-SENSES ARE TINGLING-” 

“STOP YELLING ABOUT YOUR-” Harley broke off as a laugh wheezed through his chest. He bent forward, allowing the wave of mirth to overtake him, his head leaning onto Peter’s shoulder.

Peter smiled widely. _Step one of the plan, complete_!

And when they knocked out under the watchful sentinel of the stars, something gracious kept their dreams just as warm and soft as their sprawled, knotted forms.

They rose with the sun, their noses stuffed to kingdom come and backs aching as if arthritis was a contagious disease and was passed to them by the dew-coated grass.

Grumbling all the while, they tore down their tent and folded up their blankets, shivering and trembling and blowing out puffs of thick white smoke with every breath. 

Harley gave the back door a wary once-over before pushing Peter through first, as if Peter was the force that would protect him from the ghosts in the walls. 

And, truly, Peter was just that. Or, he was planning to be, anyway. 

On the kitchen counter was a sticky note. It read, in a neat scrawl: _Shift til 5. Will be back to help you and Poppy get ready 4 dance, then work again from 7 to 11. :-)_

Harley shook his head a bit. “Should have known. Is it acceptable to be hurt that she couldn’t take time off for the one weekend I’m home, or is it selfish of me to even think that?”

“Definitely acceptable,” said Peter. “May had to work my birthday last year and, even though I never told her, it was probably the most hurtful thing she ever did. And I felt like a schmuck about it because she was working for _me_ , for _us_ , y’know? To have a better life. But sometimes I would trade a little more time with her for some of that _better life_ crap. I really would.”

“Because being with them would make your life better than enough money for a vacation or some fancy tech,” Harley affirmed, nodding. 

“Exactly.”

“Y’know, it sucks that we have to think about this as kids,” Harley said matter-of-factly as he dropped the blankets and tent ceremoniously in the corner of the living room. 

Peter huffed a laugh. “Oh, being told you were _a pleasure to have in class_ by every teacher you’ve had since kindergarten wasn’t a good enough trade-off?”

Harley raised his eyebrows as he strode back into the kitchen, shoulders hunched in on himself slightly and eyes flickering about but clearly attempting to focus upon Peter. “Oh, I was never a pleasure. I was a scrappy sonuvabitch with no regard for manners or _playing nice_. If I knew the answer, I yelled it out. I was smart and I damn well knew it.”

Peter laughed. “I don’t know what I expected.”

Harley leaned for a moment on his elbows against the kitchen counter. He propped his head on one of his hands, peering up at Peter through his lashes. “How do we feel about going out for breakfast, Rose Hill style? I’ll show you town, maybe we can make a pit-stop in some new fields. Maybe you can see some more cows.”

Peter gave Harley a half-grin, mirroring his slumped position. “Is that what you want to do?” The question rang with duality, the unspoken part loud between Harley’s ears: _will that make things easier for you_?

“Up to you. There’s a real good waffle place in town and if we ask nice I bet they’ll make them endless-”

“ _Yes_ , yes. Yes, okay, that is where we are going.”

“Thought so.”

They layered themselves back into their hats, thick knit sweaters, and jackets. Harley slung his backpack onto his shoulder and they walked into town side-by-side, Peter pointing out different plants and trees to ask what they were and Harley answering each question in an unspecific grumble ( _green, dead, oak, broccoli, leafy, tall_ ). They ate waffles with gusto- vegan ones for Harley, who was still clinging onto that train by the skin of his teeth- the young waitress popping her gum with frustration each time Peter asked for another plate. 

They walked around Rose Hill and Harley showed off all of the important landmarks: the one gas station, the place where that Extremis guy blew up a bunch of people, the general store- wherein Harley bought them both bags of mildly stale, old-fashioned candy- and the florist at which they picked up a corsage to give to Poppy for her dance, with two matching boutonnieres— delicate white roses and baby’s breath tied with a pale yellow ribbon to accent the shade of her dress.

As they walked back to the Keener residence (as Peter was reluctant to call it ‘Harley’s House’ given what he now knew), Harley would point out people and tell Peter outrageous stories about who they were and where they were going. 

It started more tame- _that’s Mrs. Liu, she’s going to sell her eggs for money to buy materials to build an apocalypse shelter_ \- and spanned to things like _Crazy Ol’ Joey and his son Mickey have been whittling away at the tree trunks of every maple tree in town for the past seventeen years because they think that if they get every tree worn to the center at the same time, a wave of sap will pour out so violently that it’ll drown the town and fossilize us like bugs in amber_.

“Harley, that _cannot_ be true,” Peter said through his giggles.

“There is no way for you to know that until you know what they’re doing!” Harley protested. “It’s all in my trusty people-watching journal,” Harley said, patting his backpack.

“You mean your creepy, stalker-wouldn’t-even-go-that-far, probably grounds for restraining orders journal?” Peter said dryly.

Harley whacked him on the shoulder, then pulled him closer and wrapped an arm around him. “Don’t be cute,” Harley drawled. “We both know it’s fiction and it’s the most exciting thing that could ever have come from this town. Correction: _I_ am the most exciting thing that could ever have come from this town.”

“I don’t know, that field over there looks pretty exciting. That’s number, what, eight? Nine? I lost count when you were telling me about the different varieties of wild grass and what each one means for wildlife-”

“That was a very interesting lecture and any college science program would be damn lucky to have me as a professor-”

“Ah, yes, how could I forget. Animal Planet and NatGeo are currently upping the stakes of their bidding war over who gets dibs on you to narrate their newest documentary the second you become legal.”

“Are you always this much of an asswipe?”

“Nah, it just sticks out now that we’re surrounded by so much southern… _charm_ ,” Peter quipped, saying the last word about as definitively as if he had been postulating how long it would take to cross the George Washington bridge at rush hour ( _five? Six? No, no, maybe seven years?_ ). 

Harley scoffed and squeezed him tighter. “You’re lucky Tony pays me so much to be your friend. If he cut the paycheck any slimmer I might have to _auf wiedersehen_ my way right out of this.”

“You know, I was honestly worried at first that Tony was paying you to be my friend.”

“Nah, Pete,” Harley said, suddenly serious. “If anything, he’d have to pay me to stop being your friend. Even at that, he couldn’t pay me enough. Tony Stark could empty his bank account clean to zero and still not have enough money to get me outta your Shirley Temple lookin’ hair.”

Peter’s face split in one of those dopey, puppy-dog grins that made Harley turn into pudding. 

“Oh, don’t be sappy. Don’t you dare say something sappy, Peter-”

“I _loooove_ you,” he sang, hanging off of Harley so that he was all but on his back. “I love you! You’re my best _friend_ and I _love you_!”

“Ew! I’m being attacked! Someone help-!”

“Say it back!” Peter chanted, an arm around Harley’s neck, in full piggy-back position. “Say it back!”

“Fine! I love you, too, you insufferable prick. I love you, too. Jesus.”

“Yay,” Peter said, tiny and below his voice but with entirely unsuppressed thrill.

“Don’t make me say it again or I’ll spontaneously turn into oatmeal.”

“Cooked or uncooked?”

“God help me.”

The afternoon blew by in a similar fashion, the most exciting event being Poppy returning home from school and demanding Harley make her mac & cheese the second she had dismounted the bus. As she began to apply her make-up and curl her hair like the primadonna she was, Peter and Harley made three boxes worth of vegan mac & cheese, careful to follow the instructions on the box as to not disappoint her majesty. It was much less gross than Peter feared it would be, making him wonder idly if Harley was on the right track with that whole vegan thing.

Mrs. Keener arrived at five-oh-eight and sprang to help Poppy without further discussion. 

The boys dressed quickly, floundering to pull on their still-stiff suits and flatten their hair to their heads. Harley had to tie Peter’s tie for him. “Tell Tony to teach you how,” Harley said dryly. “Even my dad taught me that before he up and left.”

“Tony will reteach you how, then, so we can overwrite that.”

“I’ll pretend I don’t know how so that he can feel all warm and fuzzy with the satisfaction of having taught his kinda-son something foundational.”

“Should we pretend to not know how to ride bikes so he can teach us that too?”

“And how to shave?”

“He’ll short-circuit.”

“We could make a whole day out of it,” Harley said with a grin, patting Peter on the chest after finishing with his tie. “A fun day full of Tony getting to be a Real Dad™ to us.”

“I bet we could make him cry.”

“Are you kidding? We could make him cry eight times over if we play our cards right.”

Charlotte chose that moment to enter their room. She clapped a hand to her cheek as she looked at them. “Spin for me, you two. Wow, that Tony Stark sure knows how to pick a suit! You two look just divine.”

Peter grinned widely, a blush spreading hot over his nose, but Harley’s eyes were caught on something in the hallway. Peter’s heart sunk, expecting the worst- another episode- but when he caught what Harley was staring so intently at, he found it hard to look away himself.

Poppy stood in the doorway beside her mother, hair in old-Hollywood curls over her shoulder and lips painted pale pink, wearing a goldenrod yellow dress that hugged her figure down to her mid-calf. She stood as tall as her mother in short, pointed-toe heels, and looked like the perfect picture of sophisticated grace. So unlike the girl Peter had met that morning but just as confident and bold, with a smirk playing on her lip that was a special Natasha Romanova brand of _try me_.

Harley gave a great sniffle. “Good thing we’re going with Pop, cuz she’s the only one in the whole world who could out-do us both.”

“Oh, you doofus,” Poppy said, shaking her head but grinning at the compliment all the same.

“You look really wonderful, Poppy,” Peter said sincerely.

“I sure do. And you’re not half-bad yourself, Peter Pan,” she teased, eyeing up the green material of his suit.

Harley choked on a laugh, slyly wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “Did Tony really choose that suit so he could make a Peter Pan joke? I might actually shed a tear. That’s downright poetic.”

“Shut up. You’re already crying anyway. Come pin the corsage on me. What kinda gentleman are you, keeping a lady waiting?”

Harley flushed and plucked the plastic clamshell that held the flower from his desk, opening it gingerly to reveal the unharmed rose.

It took almost three minutes, a lot of _prick_ innuendos, and some yelling in pain, but the corsage ended up pinned to Poppy’s shoulder against all odds. 

They took pictures outside on the porch, the setting sun turning everything orange and golden and pretty in that slanted way that only imminent dusk could bring.

And the dance was- good? As good as a high school dance could be, anyway. They scowled when rap came on and became irrationally excited for _Come on, Eileen_. They drank excessive amounts of Sprite and Peter ate a snow cone. They took turns twirling Poppy and each other and laughed at their own incoordination until their sides were sore enough to burst. 

They walked out arm in arm with Poppy between them at ten, when the sky was black and speckled and the air was like wading through ice. She bid them each goodnight with a gracious kiss on the cheek, thanking them for _a lovely night and all that disgusting fruity bullshit_. 

Boy, was she ever Harley’s sister. 

And, that night, when two-thirty-seven woke Harley with locked joints and heart stumbling and the echoes of a sharp slap in his ears, he allowed Peter press his head over his heart to listen to it beat, quick and light like hummingbird wings. And that was the sound he let himself fall asleep to, realizing all at once that relinquishing the hold of his boundaries upon himself was the first step to letting himself heal.

Saturday morning gave them granola and yogurt and another foray into Peter’s plan, rain dumping from the sky Biblically, thunder rumbling and lightning blinking and Poppy closing herself into her room with a book to _enjoy the aura of suffering the rain provided_. 

Peter and Harley played Monopoly. They played ConnectFour. They did a thousand-piece puzzle, then undid it and did it again in half the time. 

Harley felt almost as if his father weren’t even there. Which, unfortunately, was because Harley wasn’t feeling very much of anything at all.

So when Harley found himself staring into the corner of the living room and drifting like boardwalk planks after a vengeful storm, Peter looked starkly into Harley’s eyes, so seriously that Harley, for the first time, found it near impossible to meet his gaze. Peter raised both arms straight out in front of him. “Good thing I thought ahead and brought some emotional jumper cables with me. Here, just attach them like so-“ Harley was suddenly seized between Peter’s noodly arms and held tight against his narrow chest. 

“This is just a hug, Pete. I’ve seen the tweet-” 

“No, they’re emotional jumper cables.” A pause. “Are they working?” 

Another pause as Harley shut his eyes and allowed himself to melt into the embrace, imagining he could feel the roaring of Peter’s blood in his veins and the beating of his heart against his chest, surrounded by Peter’s smell and locked tight in something so much sweeter than he could ever strive to be. 

“Yeah,” he answered softly. “Yeah, they’re working, you goddamn internet slug.” 

Peter swayed them slightly side to side, the motion comforting like a childhood lullaby remembered. 

When they went up to bed that night, full to burst with the tacos they had spent the last two hours making, Peter knew he could not restrain himself from asking any longer.

“So this guitar has been sitting here for days and I’m not saying I’m upset that you haven’t offered to serenade me like Heath Ledger in _Ten Things I Hate About You, but I’m upset about it_.”

“Oh, God, Peter. I am not nearly good enough at guitar or singing to serenade you.”

Peter folded his legs before him criss-cross style, an expectant expression on his face.

“No. _No_ ,” Harley said emphatically.

Peter continued to stare silently.

“I said no, Peter. No- oh, fuck me sideways. Fine. Fine, I’ll play you _one song_ and that is it.”

Peter grinned widely enough for all his teeth to show. “I will be the best audience you have ever had.”

Harley paused where he was struggling to pull his guitar strap over his head. “You will be the only audience I’ve ever had,” he said, amused. 

“You’ve never played for anyone, ever? Not a school talent-show, or, or summer camp or something?”

“Nope.” He popped the ‘p.’

“Wow,” Peter said. “So this is like a special feature showing.”

Harley rolled his eyes and shook out his hands before tuning the guitar quickly. “You could say that.”

Harley plucked the strings as if warming up before looking at Peter seriously. “Don’t be expectin’ the world or anything because I’m about to give you South Dakota at best.” He began to strum gently, and Peter recognized the changing chords as belonging to a song Harley listened to on near-constant repeat. 

Peter’s jaw dropped as Harley began to sing. 

His voice was rough with texture— not sweet, but warm and gritty like crackling log fires and thick wool sweaters. Every word was an entire story, every phrase an epic, each verse a lifetime. Peter could live in it like a goddamn freeloader on their ex-college roommate’s couch and never feel the need to leave.

When Harley reached the bridge of the song, Peter paid special attention to the mischievous quirk of the other’s lips as he formed the lyrics. “ _Darling, when the ice caps melt, when the devil’s in the Bible belt_ -” Harley paused for a moment, still strumming, and said, in time, “that’s you, right now in Tennessee, Pete,” before continuing on, “ _don’t cower in your bed_ …” 

Peter grinned goofily, tapping his fingers along to the beat of the strumming. 

The song ended with one ceremonious chord-strum, Harley only half-grinning at the hopelessly enthralled look on Peter’s face. 

“Play it again,” Peter commanded.

“What? No way.”

“Harley, you have got to be kidding me. This whole time. This whole stupid time I’ve known you. You should be- you could have- you! You! American Idol, that’s what- you should have- I’m. _Harley_.”

“Don’t be dramatic, I’m mediocre at best. And I’m rusty. It’s been so long since I’ve played I must have messed up the chords six different times-”

“Shut your stupid mouth. No talking, only singing. You are not allowed to ever talk to me ever again, not even once. From now on, you only sing.”

“Screw off.”

“Fair enough.”

Harley cuffed him around the head, grinning nonetheless. He felt rather as if the sun had been captured and shrunk down to fit in his chest and now it glowed, simmered, beat relentless warmth into every atom and fiber that stitched him into that thing called a person. He was light; he was bird song and the rustling of summer cicadas; he was eskimo kisses and hot chocolate and he was, above all, loved. And in that moment, he knew it. He felt it.

And it was miraculous, feeling- that- bubbling in his chest while sitting in a place that he once cowered in fear, hands over his ears and tongue bitten between his teeth as fresh bruises formed in inky fingerprints on his biceps. Because Peter, that little shit, that imp, that absolute menace had made it certain that Harley was lovable. He made it obvious and he was the one who made it true, for Harley was at his best and most worthy when he was with Peter. Peter made him kinder, and stronger, and more open-minded. Peter made him courageous when he wanted to falter, made him push and prosper when he wanted to fall and let the earth swallow him in one almighty _gulp_. 

Wasn’t that all love was? Making someone better and becoming better in turn?

The thought kept Harley smiling the whole night long.

And that was why Harley- after leaving his mother and sister with a few tears, a solid kiss on each cheek, and a promise to be back in the summer; after being pulled into a tight embrace by Pepper and Tony Stark and May Parker in turn, each hug warmer and longer than the last; after looking out upon the jagged skyline he had gone so quickly from mistrusting in its unnaturality to cherishing for its gall- was able to say with absolute certainty, “I’m so glad to be home.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading this shit show. i cannot believe how long it got so if you made it this far i adore you and please let me know what you thought!!
> 
> not that comments and kudos make me write faster... but comments and kudos make me write faster.
> 
> love you all dearly xoxo


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